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Judge to be judged

The gong has rung for Round Two. Investigating Supreme Court Justice Luciano Varela yesterday announced he was opening the case against judge Garzón for investigating crimes committed by the Franco regime. The charge is of prevarication, the strongest professional conduct accusation that can be levelled against a judge, brought forward by two of Spain’s most rancid ultra-right wing associations, representing a demographically insignificant number of hooligans, skinheads and regime nostalgics.

If found guilty of this charge, Garzón could lose his toga and funny hat for 20 years, and war criminals worldwide could uncork the bubbly they have chilling for the occasion. Here in Spain, the promoters of this case will celebrate by breaking beer bottles on their heads and daring each other to have intercourse with a bull terrier.

In layman’s terms, Garzón is accused of knowingly acting against the law when he began the criminal investigation in the regime’s crimes, given that the Amnesty law of 1977 prohibits any such investigation, period. Garzón’s defense is that he opened an investigation into possible crimes against humanity, which do not prescribe and are universal, in the sense that local amnesty laws cannot be used to protect them.

Varela refused to let any of Garzón’s witnesses –judges of international fame with experience in crimes against humanity– testify on his behalf during the hearings, arguing that their testimony was irrelevant to the case at hand. This is a telling sign, proving this case was never about justice. Quite on the contrary, it’s about feeding the pain of many to protect the few, because everyone knows exactly what happened, who did it, why they did it and when it all went down. And meanwhile, the bones of the disappeared lay waiting to rest…

As a side note, justice Varela is considered of the “liberal” wing of the Spanish Supreme Court, a clear example of fifth column strategy: place yourself as that which you are against, and undermine it from inside. Note interesting similarity to definition 3b above…

But it is not over yet. This mockery of justice is a ticking bomb of growing political storms and may well be ill-fated, given the karma that goes with war crimes. I would tell our celebrating skinhead groups not to pull their pants down too fast, or the pooch just might end up screwing them.